Assured by God's Uncomplicated Requirement

1. 0:02Be seated. John Smith has for several years been kind of our wrap-up speaker at this workshop. And he always kind of helps to package all of this, make it applicable, and send us on our way with a challenge, with something to think about.
2. 0:37with something to maybe talk about and challenge us on our way home. And I know that this year won't be any exception to that. You know, John, you that have been coming here for a long time and those that go to other lectureships and workshops and family encampments around the Brotherhood, he's kind of a staple in many of those.
3. 1:08in many of those events. And he's there in those places and here because he's a man who has been preaching for a long time. He doesn't just give us pablum. He doesn't just give us a line. He applies that in a way that challenges us.
4. 1:34And when he gets up here and points his finger at us and says, now this is important. You need to listen to this. We know we'd better listen. John is a sought-after speaker. He's a preacher. He's an author. He's recently written a book, just recently published. What's the name of it, John? Teaching Faith to Our Children.
5. 2:09Is that important or what? Passing that to the next generation. Our faith is so important. Well, we've asked John to come and kind of wrap things up in the Minor Prophets with a thought from the book of Micah in regard to God's uncomplicated requirement.
6. 2:41I didn't say it was easy. I just said it was uncomplicated. And John is going to challenge us with that thought. And as he comes up to preach, we welcome him in the way that we always welcome a speaker to the podium. John, come and preach the word. I'd like for you to join me in a responsive reading. This reading will come from Micah chapter 6.
7. 3:29say a line and I'll ask you to repeat that line back congregationally. With what shall I come before the Lord? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgressions? He has told us what is good. And what does the Lord require of me?
8. 4:28but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with my God. Please join me.
9. 6:06I read a book not too long ago titled The Prodigal God. I would highly recommend it to you. Written by a man named Timothy Keller. I want to call your attention today to a story that all of you are familiar with. We commonly call it the story of the prodigal son. Luke tells us who Jesus was speaking to.
10. 7:04And I never cease to be amazed at the things that I overlook in God's Word. Things I've read I don't know how many times. But the audience that Jesus is addressing is critically important to this story. Luke says, Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear him.
11. 7:39This is who Jesus is talking to. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, this man welcomes sinners and eats with them. Now until you grasp the fact that Jesus isn't talking to the disciples here, he is specifically addressing an audience.
12. 8:12that is made up of tax collectors and sinners and Pharisees and teachers of the law. One group came to listen. They came to get personally involved in this story. And they saw themselves in it. The other group came to express contempt. They didn't get personally involved in the story. They didn't see themselves in this story.
13. 8:58They refused to believe that they could fit into that category of sinners. I pray that all of us are here this morning to listen and to get personally involved in this story and find ourselves in it, because if we don't, the story is wasted on us. The story has three characters in it, the father and the two sons.
14. 9:39Jesus specifically designs this story to address the relationship of his audience to God. And I think that it might well be called the story of the two sons. Obviously, the father represents God. It's also obvious to us.
15. 10:06that the older brother represents the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. It was not obvious to them. And there's something right there that's critically important. Jesus specifically designs the older brother in this story to represent one element of his audience, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law.
16. 10:37And if they had seen themselves in this story, they might have profited from it. But they didn't. The younger son represents the prodigal. In this story, Jesus strongly condemns the moral depravity and the self-seeking rebelliousness of the younger son. But he also strongly condemns
17. 11:18the self-righteous attitude of the older son. In this story, brothers and sisters, both of these sons are lost. They are equally lost because in reality they are pursuing the same thing just in different ways. They're both pursuing self.
18. 11:52It's very easy for us to regale this audience for their inability or unwillingness to see themselves in this story. What is very hard is for us to see ourselves in it. I have found myself in both groups at various times of my life. There have been times when I had one foot
19. 12:26in one group and the other foot in the other at the same time. I have tried, I have tried obeying the rules in order to find God. And I have tried rebelling against the rules in order to find myself. The younger son asks his father for his share of the inheritance, roughly one third. It's an outrageous request.
20. 13:02And we would expect the father to angrily deny it. But the father despays his love for his son by saying to him, if that's what you really want, you can have it. If that's what you really want from me, if that's what you want from me, no, no, listen to this. If that's what you want from me, I'll give it to you.
21. 13:40I'm sure that he hoped that the son would return. But please notice this. He did not go after him. Please pay attention to that. He didn't go after him. The son goes far away. He squanders everything he has as a profligate.
22. 14:07When he finds himself in the horribly humiliating position of feeding pigs, the Bible says he comes to his senses. But don't miss the fact that coming to his senses was the direct result of the situation he found himself in. He didn't come to his senses until he had nothing. And he found himself in the humiliating position.
23. 14:44of feeding somebody else's pigs. That's where he came to his senses. As long as he had the money, as long as he was having a good time, as long as he was partying, he did not come to his senses. And sometimes that's how low we have to get before we really come to our senses and realize how desperately we need God. No one gave him anything.
24. 15:24I don't have time for it, but there is an important principle there. No one gave him anything. That would never have happened if the father had gone after him. The son realizes that his father is the only one who ever left him. And he decides he's going to go back home and display his penitence by begging his father to allow him to be a doormat, to be a servant.
25. 16:03The father, you know, sees him coming. He runs to meet him, and he orders a celebration. Everybody from the surrounding area is invited. The fattened calf is the main course. There is a live band, and the Bible says there was dancing, which means this was not a Church of Christ celebration. The message of this part of the story is that God's love and God's grace
26. 16:35made available to sinners through the cross of Calvary, can pardon and completely restore any person who comes to their senses and humbles themselves and humbles themselves and begs for forgiveness no matter how sinful they've been. It doesn't matter.
27. 17:01But please notice how the son humbles himself in coming back to the father. He says, I'm not worthy. And he isn't, you know. No, he's telling the truth. And the father doesn't take him back, church, because he's worthy. He takes him back because he's his son. And that's what he does for you and I every day. He takes me back because I'm his son.
28. 17:37Now the older brother comes on the scene. The Bible says he's angry with the father because he considers himself to be more worthy of the father's benevolence. Now, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law are right there. And you remember what they said? They muttered, this man welcomes sinners and eats with them. And we're not in that category.
29. 18:12But what interests me is the first thing the older brother does is exactly what the younger one did. He rebels against his father's authority. He questions his justice. He disgraces the father by refusing to join in the celebration. He actually forces his father to demean himself and come outside to talk to him. He's out there sulking.
30. 18:46The father not only goes outside, he pleads with the older son to come in and join the party. The older brother's anger is based on a legalistic view of righteousness, which is based on obedience. And since he has never disobeyed his father, which is patently untrue, his father is unjust.
31. 19:21Now listen to this. He says, I have never disobeyed you. Therefore, I am more worthy of your benevolence than your other son who has done nothing but disobey you. And so he says, it's not fair, it isn't just for you to welcome back this profligate son of yours and you do nothing for me. As a Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus,
32. 20:03Was not an obedient slave to God. He was an obedient slave to his legalistic religion of graceless righteousness. And it turned him into a self-righteous monster. The point that Jesus is making to both of these groups who are listening to him and to us.
33. 20:31is that in the sight of God, there is no moral or spiritual value in obedience unless it is motivated by love for the Father. Now I said something important to you. No, I mean it. There is no moral or spiritual value in obedience unless it is motivated by the love for the Father.
34. 21:05To be slavishly devoted to moral obedience in order to establish self-righteousness is no better than being slavishly devoted to moral depravity to satisfy the search for self-fulfillment. They lead to the same result. Separation from God. No, you need to get this. They lead to the same result.
35. 21:34Separation from God. There is no God in either of those. It's all about me. The older brother is slavishly devoted to his self-religious religion of obedience. The younger is slavishly devoted to his religion of self-fulfillment. Jesus says both of you are hopelessly lost because what you're seeking is not God. You're seeking yourself. The Father...
36. 22:12responds to the older brother with gentleness. He says, my son, I'm asking you to swallow your pride, your pride based upon your self-righteousness, based upon your obedience. I'm asking you to humble yourself and welcome your brother home. That's what I'm asking you to do. Even if what you say about yourself and your brother is true,
37. 22:54It really doesn't matter. And then he says this, everything I have is yours. Isn't that an amazing statement? This is from God to the older brother. Everything, he's been complaining because the father hasn't killed the fatted calf and made a celebration for him. And he says, oh my goodness, don't you understand? Everything I have is yours.
38. 23:27Not just the fatted calf. It's all yours. But it's not yours because of your obedience. It's yours because you are my son. It's yours because you are my son. I have no way of expressing to you how far-reaching these principles are. No, it changes everything in the man-God relationship.
39. 24:08The choice that the older brother is faced with is the same choice that you and I are faced with every day. Everything God has is ours. We can have it all, but our obedience has to be predicated on loving the Father. And that's why the first commandment, church, is the first commandment. That's why the first commandment is the first commandment. You shall love the Lord your God.
40. 24:36with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. That's the first commandment. And until you get that right, you won't get anything right. The rest of it doesn't mean anything. Don't you understand this? 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 don't mean anything until you get number one. The irony of this story is that throughout the Gospels,
41. 25:10You have to have noticed this if you're familiar with the Gospels. Generally speaking, people who sought a relationship with God based on being legalistically and moralistically religious were offended at Jesus. No, it's consistent throughout the Gospels. And those who were neither moral nor religious were attracted to Jesus, just like John the Baptist.
42. 25:41Luke chapter 7, all the people, even the tax collectors, when they heard Jesus' words, acknowledged that God's way was right because they had been baptized by John. But the Pharisees and the experts in the law rejected God's purpose for themselves because they had not been baptized by John. One group came to listen.
43. 26:15John and the other came to express contempt. God's way and God's purpose are found in that little story that Jesus told specifically to some who were confident in their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else. Jesus told this story specifically to people who
44. 26:46looked down on everybody else and were confident in their own righteousness. And you know the whole story that follows? The tax collector and the Pharisee who went up into the temple to pray. That's the story. And it was told specifically to those groups of people. The Pharisee told God how good he was. And the tax collector told God how bad he was.
45. 27:18We see humility in the tax collector. He would not even look up to heaven. He said, God have mercy on me. God have mercy on me. I'm not a very good person. Jesus said that the tax collector went home justified with his sins forgiven. And the Pharisee went home unjustified with his sins still intact. Because Jesus says everyone who exalts himself will be humbled.
46. 27:51And he who humbles himself will be exalted. Do you remember what we read together at the beginning of the lesson? What does your God require of you? But to walk humbly? That's what we're talking about here. Jesus deliberately portrays the legalistic, moralistically self-righteous and proud as unacceptable to God. And the sin conscious.
47. 28:27unworthy as acceptable to God. Matthew 21, 31, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom ahead of you. And do you know why? Because they knew who they were. They knew that they were. I preached for six years in Southern California. I doubt that there was a single Sunday in those six years that some...
48. 29:01person or persons didn't sort of stagger into the church building. One of the things I discovered in Southern California, as opposed to preaching many years in the Bible Belt, was that I never had to convince any of them that they were sinners. No, I'm telling you the truth. They knew that because they didn't dress themselves
49. 29:33And they didn't see themselves. They came into that church building with a hole in their chest that big around. And so when I studied with them about the gospel, the last thing I had to do was to convince them that they were sinners because they would say to me, that's the one thing I know. Jesus uses this story to redefine everything we commonly think of as the way to find God.
50. 30:12and forgiveness, and peace, and salvation, and fulfillment. This is a story about two ways to search for the purpose and the meaning of life. There is the way of moral conformity to find God, and the way of moral depravity to find the self. I've tried both of them. I suspect most of you all have two at one time or another.
51. 30:43We do that in an attempt to discover what works for us. You know, I find that phrase really kind of interesting because in Tennessee and Alabama, they don't say what works for us. They say what it takes to crank my tractor. But both ways leave us separated from God. The truth is that both of these ways of approaching life and salvation are much more alike than appears at first.
52. 31:18Both sons were resentful toward their father's control. They wanted their share of the father's wealth, but they didn't want the father. No, that's what comes through in this story. The older brother's just as guilty. What he wants from the father is the wealth, but he doesn't want the father.
53. 31:49The only difference between them is the way that they tried to achieve their goals. One rebelled, went far away and disobeyed. The other rebelled, stayed home and disobeyed. The hearts of both boys are the same. Neither wanted the father for himself. They only wanted what they could get from him. The message of the story is that both approaches to life and to God are wrong.
54. 32:22They are both self-centered rather than God-centered. And Jesus presents a radical alternative, and that is the way of humility and self-abasement, which leads us to obeying God's first and great commandment. Because of who he is, not because of what he can do for us. And I just want...
55. 32:58you to do what I've been doing myself, why do I serve God? I mean, what's really behind it? And the truth is that often I want things from Him. If I really look carefully at my prayer life, it is filled with, I would like for you to give, I would like for you to do, I would like, I would like, I would like. This is what I want you to do for me. This is what I want you to give me.
56. 33:27And in my prayer life, it betrays quite often. What I really want from God is not God himself. I want what he can do for me. Fix this and do that and take care of this problem for me. The story presents us with two sons. By conventional standards, one is good and the other one is bad. The father reaches out to both of them because they are both lost.
57. 34:06He invites both of the sons to give up their self-centered attempts at salvation by humbling themselves and accepting his grace and his authority. We are all, most of us, more comfortable with a legally based definition of sin. Sin is breaking the rules.
58. 34:34We are uncomfortable with the principle-based definition of sin that Jesus gives us in this story, not loving the Father. Jesus says the younger son wasn't lost because he broke the rules. The older son wasn't saved because he kept them. Again, I'm saying something important to you. Don't miss this. The younger son wasn't lost because he broke the rules.
59. 35:13And the older son wasn't saved because he kept them. They were both lost because they didn't love the father. Again, what a far-reaching principle. I hope you see it changes everything. It changes the foundation of the way we approach the Bible and our relationship with God.
60. 35:40We can keep the letter of law. We can do everything right and at the same time violate all of the principles that surround those laws. Jesus does not divide the world into good guys and bad guys. He divides the world into those who love God and those who don't. No, that's the bottom line. It's not the good guys and the bad guys. The world is made up of two groups of people, those who love God and those who don't. I hasten to add that
61. 36:17Loving God with all of the heart and soul and mind and strength is not just an oral profession. It is a lifestyle. It is a lifestyle. It dictates how we think. It dictates how we treat other people, how we spend our time, how we spend our money. It dictates what we value. The message of the cross is not religion or non-religion.
62. 36:47It is not morality or immorality. It is not self-fulfillment. It is not rigid conformity. The message of the cross says that everybody has sinned, everybody is lost, everybody is loved by God, and everybody is invited into a child-father relationship. The story ends with one boy saved, a child of the father, entitled to everything the father has, and the other boy,
63. 37:23lost. Not because God didn't love him, but because he didn't love God. Not because Jesus didn't die for him, but because he wouldn't die for Jesus. This point that I want to challenge you with. If you've been in ministry very long, I know that you have seen this. While both sons' methods
64. 38:04of seeking salvation failed because they were focused on self and not on God. One method is not as dangerous as the other. The younger son's condition was not as serious as the older son's.
65. 38:30Because his sins were sins of passion and the flesh, and the brother's sins were sins of the attitude and the disposition. The Gospels clearly demonstrate that sins of passion, sins of the flesh, are much less prone to make people rebel against the Gospel than sins of the attitude and disposition. I'm saying something important to you.
66. 39:03The very sins that we tend to focus on are not as serious in terms of finding God as the sins of attitude and disposition. This soul-searching question haunts me. It haunts me. I can't get it off my mind. I hope that it will haunt you. And my question is, am I? My question is, am I, John? Are you?
67. 39:43personally, attracting the same kinds of people that Jesus and John the Baptist attracted? Whoa! Now that'll make you uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable. Are the same people that were attracted? No, it's in the Bible. I'm not making this up. Are we congregationally attracting the same kind of people that Jesus attracted? The tax collectors.
68. 40:21and sinners were gathering around to listen to Jesus. I am convicted that often I am not. I think if you will look around you, the answer to the question may be pretty obvious. So the question is, what needs to be changed in John's life?
69. 40:53What needs to be changed in the life of our congregations that would allow us to attract the kind of people who responded to the gospel of Jesus Christ and what John the Baptist had to say to them? What is important today is not where this story left these two sons. What is important today is where it leaves us. Where do we fit into this story? Because if we don't, then the story's wasted on us.
70. 41:28It's not how we apply this to other people that counts. It's how we apply it to ourselves that counts. How are you and I going to react to this story? How are you going to react to all of the incredible things you've heard here these last few days? Are we going to leave here changed or are we going to go home the same way we were when we got here? Because if we're not changed, then this workshop was wasted on us. If we're not better,
71. 42:02If we're not more molded into the image of the risen Christ, we didn't come here to listen to religious information. We came here for transformation. We came here to be convicted and uplifted and challenged. And we came here to leave here better and different than we were, more like the Christ than we were when we came. And if it doesn't happen, then it was for nothing. The Holy Spirit, I believe,
72. 42:34is working right now to convict all of us to humble ourselves, to come to our senses about where we are in our relationship with the Father. We need to go to Him just as we are, which is the only way anybody has ever gone. I know that probably many of you have met those people who say, well, you know, I'd like to become a Christian, but boy, there's some things I've got to get straightened out in my life. I mean, that's got to be one of the dumbest things I've ever heard.
73. 43:08If you could get those things straightened out, you don't need to become a Christian. The problem is you can't. And that's why you need God. And that's why you need the cross. And that's why we need to respond to the gospel. We are all prodigals, you know. We are all prodigals. All of us have found ourselves in the pig pen at one time or another. And all of the people you meet,
74. 43:52that you work with, that live next door to you, that you sit next to in the restaurants, all of those people either are or have been in the pig pen. And the call of the gospel is to come to our senses and to realize that God is the only one who ever truly loved us. And so we need to humble ourselves, realize our unworthiness, and go back to the Father to confess our sins.
75. 44:29and to seek forgiveness. The very nature of the assembly of the church is confessional. What else could happen to us in the presence of God? The very nature of our assemblies is confessional. I want so badly to launch into the fact that extending an invitation has become so much just a part of our tradition.
76. 45:06that we don't even expect anybody to respond, and we're shocked when they do. Because we start saying, man, we've got to get home and get dinner ready. Oh, my word, I hope it's not a baptism. There's no telling how long that'll take. The invitation of God is to all of us. And any sermon that doesn't demand a response of some kind is not the gospel.
77. 45:42Every time the gospel is preached, every time we hear a word from the Lord, in some way, every person who hears it needs to respond to it. I'm not saying you have to come down front, although that's a good thing. I'm just saying there has to be some kind of a response. Unfortunately, and you know I'm telling you the truth, the minute we walk out those doors, we'll be talking about nearly everything in the world but what happened here.
78. 46:12Where are we going for lunch? Well, I'm through. In the Bible, praise and celebration always follow confession and penitence. After the son confesses his sins and his love for the father, the father says that now they're going to have a time of praise and celebration. And so I'm going to ask you to join us, stand, and we're going to sing Highest Place.
79. 46:50And if anyone feels a need for prayer or to confess their faith or to come back to the Father, if anybody here has come to their senses today, we invite you to come and make that known while we stand and sing. We bless you.

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